REVIEW Logitech G602 Wireless Gaming Mouse & G440 Mousepad

Earlier this year, Logitech made the decision to de-fibrillate their gaming peripherals with a new heartbeat - by marrying their existing G series with some new contenders. This is their new approach. Their new slogan. To declare the victory of their scientific concoctions.

A couple of months ago I was invited to a "Logitech Playhouse", a PR event to recognize that Logitech have created some new products, but also revised some old ones too. (If I get enough interest, I can post my experiences I had at Logitech Playhouse).

My horrendous attempt at a quick selfie while heading upstairs to the main areas of the Logitech Playhouse. They decided to put me up as representing OCAU - it was an honour!

But of course, the slogan hasn't been created and the only item they concocted was a G700 with some tribal tattoos (See G700s - review coming soon). Logitech have gone back to the drawing board, glanced briefly at their competitors, and released their latest musculus - the Logitech G602 Wireless Gaming Mouse.

First Impressions/layout​

For a basic background of my own experience - I have used an absolutely absurd amount of mouse peripherals in my time so far, so getting down to choosing the right mouse for myself eventually boils down to personal preference, but equally important that the mouse genuinely suits your hand.

The Logitech G602 is actually quite an interesting peripheral. With an appearance of 3 split sections - buttons, palm and wrist areas - each with a different material type to suit the hand-to-mouse aesthetics. The appearance itself is hard to relate it to anything outside of a jet-fighter design. To state the blatantly obvious, we have the very traditional left and right mouse buttons, both of which have upward half-pipe-esque slopes to snuggle your fingers, the palm wrest is a hardened rubber feel with spaced ridges that sit your palm firmly onto the mouse and the last section at the bottom that stretches out on the left hand side to rest your thumb. Lefties, I'm sorry to say that this mouse is most likely out of the running for you at this point.

Righties, I certainly hope you're still reading, because you're in for a real treat. With our standard mouse buttons is a scroll wheel that... I can only describe as MANLY. Think of the cheaper feeling scroll wheels as a tonka truck part - this feels more like it was a mechanism yanked out of a rifle. There is an intriguing balance of noticeable yet beautifully fluent feel to it. I know this seems like a strange thing to get down in your knees and raise your hands to the sky about, but there are mouse peripherals that are almost double this price that don't feel as good as this.

The scroll wheel quality does come at a price though. The G602 has opted for no left/right toggles for the scroller - which for Logitech is incredibly unusual! Most of the lower/non-gaming Logitech range come with the left/right toggles (usually used for navigation, however it is noted that for many, these are crucial for certain game controls. For Mech Warrior related games this is everything). On top of this, unlike other G series mouse devices - unfortunately there is no dual mode scroll wheel. Understandably, this appears to be simply because the physics of the mouse would have made it extremely difficult to squeeze in such a feature.

Note that the "technically" smaller MMO brother - the G600 does come with this scroll wheel function.

What you get instead of the scroll wheel abilities are the full set of configurable keys just comfortably above the thumb hold. This lines up buttons G4-G9, protruding out of the side with a noticeable aesthetic feel between each button. I find that as you move your thumb across, your mind begins to take score as "three rows of two on the thumb - top, middle, bottom" - the same sort of "sense" you get when driving a manual car and you're learning the clutch.

Note the indicator lights for the sensitivity, currently on.

By default, the two 'G' Keys on the left mouse button toggle the sensitivity with the indicator lights to guide you on which level of sensitivity you're using. The lights themselves aren't an "always on" mode thankfully. A few seconds after, the lights dim, leaving you to bathe in your typical gaming ambient light. The same goes for the battery indicator, which sits just below the scroll wheel, and just below this is the toggle between the "battery stamina" (green light) and "high performance" (blue light) modes. These settings can also be seen and configured with the Logitech Gaming Software.

Performance/Ability​

Logitech did recommend to try the G602 alongside one of their mouse pads. They very kindly sent their G440 hard surface gaming mousepad.

The combined aesthetic result is absolutely profound.
The G602 uses polytetrafluoroethylene feet (of which I totally remember how to pronounce and didn't merely copy/paste from their site ) which certainly sounds cool, but what's the relevance?

The polytetrafluoroethylene feet (highlighted in red). It's interesting to note that there are two very small feet JUST for the optical laser in the inner area of the mouse. Very cool.

To best define it - it's a match made in heaven. Logitech claim "Frictionless design" when pairing a G440 with a "Logitech calibrated mouse laser" throughout their product summaries. This analogy is literally dead on. It takes only very slight touches to move the G602 over the G440 - and glides without feeling numb. When using them in conjunction, you could almost swear that the G602 lower palm rest is made of the same material as the G440's surface.

With a lot of fps experience behind me, I can see this mouse will scare some of the diehard players due to the wireless connectivity as the only option. This usually comes down to "reporting/polling rates" (I.e how many times per second the mouse communicates to the computer). Often in competitive gaming environments, wired mouse peripherals are a non-negotiable. This is because on a wired connection, the desired reporting rate has very small fractions of fluctuation that are unnoticeable during use. Once you bring a tailless mouse to the table, the fluctuation is much greater. To add to this, wireless connections won't always perform at their top reporting rate at all times, and the reporting rate is often much slower than their wired brothers. This alongside the many environment variables that can be encountered (interference, distance from USB dongle etc) make it a little disheartening.

Unfortunately I have since discovered that due to Windows 8's issues with choking gaming mouse polling rates, I am unable to elaborate with testing this for the time being. It appears to be "choking" the report rates to 1/5th of their actual capability. I will post back more conclusive results on this once I have rolled back to Windows 7.

Update:
I am genuinely baffled as to what happened while I was using Windows 8 - What I was getting was a 125Hz-200Hz maximum on the 500Hz setting. (tested both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0). I was unable to bust the myth, but I have now verified the rates in Windows 7 x64:

500Hz - Performance mode

250Hz - Performance Mode

125Hz - Endurance Mode

Razer Abyssus comparison - 1000Hz

Configuration/Customization​

The Gaming Mouse Software also provides decent capability for the G602. From options already available on-the-fly, to the ability to tweak polling rates, full macro configs, the ability to switch entire macro key profiles in-game (when configured), game scanning and even the configuration to choose between using the G602's on-board memory or the current computer to save profiles. A nice little addition for those of us who would like to use their mouse between multiple gaming machines.

On-board memory provides a lot of configuration within the mouse settings.

Flick that switch over to "Automatic Game Detection" and we have even more!

Game Scanner was successfully able to detect both Steam and non-steam games.

In my experience, the profiles pre-loaded come with the ability to easily assign commands from the keyboard and transfer them into the G keys. This can be good and bad, as sometimes when you're attempting to add a keyboard assignment, it's not always clear on what command does what. This is just a minor obstacle however.

Macro assignment is broken down into various options - it's hard to find something it won't do.

Conclusion​

In conclusion - those looking for a more ergonomic feel for an MMO or RTS can certainly be wanting this mouse. The mouse is suited to just about any right-handed gamer's hand structure and is comfortable for those who don't require their thumb to interact with the mousepad (there are some of you out there, I'm sure.) If the G602 just had an alternative wired mode, I would recommend this to any FPS player in a heartbeat. For any of you that might still want to use this for FPS - I'd recommend it for games similar to Left For Dead 2 where those crucial rates are not a deal-breaker. For competitive environments, you'll find yourself preferring a mouse with its tail very much attached.

In its "Performance" mode, Logitech outlines up to 250 hours of continuous use and the "Endurance" mode up to 1440 hours, so if you do end up buying this mouse, you certainly won't have any frustrations with battery life anytime soon.

OCAU - Did I miss anything? Anything you'd like to know? Anything you want me to test? Any feedback? Anyone? Bueller...

With my next reviews, I'll be testing the Logitech G700 and it's replacement, the G700S side-by-side, followed by Logitech's first ever stab at a mechanical keyboard - the G710+.

Special thanks to Logitech and for the opportunity to let me borrow out these for a review.

The G602 gets a 3 out of 5.
Happy New year everybody! See you in 2014!|Renegade|

I have Windows 8 and a G700, it has no issues with polling rate set at 500, and verified with mouserate. Might be some other issue.

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Thanks Terrastrife, I'll look more into it this week. You might be right, I might have something else causing the issue.
I'll test it with the G700, G700S and the G602 in Win7 and Win8 in two different environments, see if we can potentially bust a myth.

I'm currently looking for my new mouse so this could be it given its aesthetics. And the mousepad looks quite good also.

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Thank you Mr Chilled.
It does genuinely feel different to other brands out there - I do stress that it does come down to personal preference as far as comfort goes. If you've got larger hands such as myself and prefer your wrist to be closer towards the base of the mouse, this is ideal.

Here's an idea of the size/aesthetic design. The G602 from the two longest points of length are approx. 14cm.

Here's a Razer Abyssus for comparison:

The "slope" characteristic that Logitech tends to create on their mouse peripherals are much the same, and are generally taller in the middle.
Again, Razer Abyssus for comparison:

Finally, as part of the aesthetics, Logitech tend to have the "wrist point" as low down as possible. As you can see the Razer Abyssus I'm still using for comparison has the wrist point a little higher and slopes sharply, which can be great for some and terrible for others, completely dependent on personal comfort/taste and expected use.

I have Windows 8 and a G700, it has no issues with polling rate set at 500, and verified with mouserate. Might be some other issue.

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Terra, I ran a number of tests in Windows 8 but eventually just binned it and completed the polling on Windows 7. Really not sure about what the deal was. I'll get Windows 8 back onto a test machine and try it out another time.
Seems like one of those Twilight Zone deals.